Spare Me Your Caroline Lucas Eulogies
The Green Party bigwig and those who buy her arguments are why we are poor
The Lieutenant General of the All Party Anti-Growth Coalition, Green Corps has announced she is will be standing down from Parliament, after serving the seat of Brighton and Hove since 2010. In Caroline Lucas’ statement, the first Green Party MP, their former leader, and just about the only politician of that party that anyone can name says she has:
“not been able to focus as much as I would like on the existential challenges that drive me - the Nature and Climate emergencies.”
“And the truth is, as these threats to our precious planet become ever more urgent, I have struggled to spend the time I want on these accelerating crises. I have therefore decided not to stand again as your MP at the next election.”
How very noble. Lucas is quitting her position as an MP in order to devote more time to politics.
It is, of course, nothing at all to do with the fact that the Brighton Green Party was reduced to just seven council seats at the local elections, its worst result since 2003. It can’t possibly be anything at all to do with the fact that the Labour Party gained an astonishing 18 seats compared to the last election and control of the council from the Greens. It is certainly entirely unrelated to the fact that the Labour Party won control of Brighton Council, and unseated the Green council leader, and deputy leaders.
No this is a principled decision taken for no reason other than how Caroline is deeply concerned that her ability to speak from the green benches and directly question ministers, media access, and taxpayer funded office are constraining her ability to speak out on the issues that matter.
But whatever her reasoning, there is an orthodoxy within polite society that states a resigning MP must be in receipt of doting farewells, rather than searching questions. No matter the damage their campaigns and ideas have caused this country.
And let’s be in no doubt about it, Caroline Lucas’ ideas have caused profound damage.
Thanks to a series of weak and wobbly governments buckling to the likes of Lucas, we are poorer, less productive, and even more polluting than we otherwise would be.
Despite government commitments on planning reform, energy infrastructure, transport, tax, and more over the last 13 years - the government has repeatedly caved to the all too effective campaigning of the likes of Caroline Lucas. It’s a formidable legacy - but not one to cheer.
On housing, the root cause of so many of this country’s woes, Caroline Lucas is a gold star nimby. She called on the government to abolish housing targets back in 2014, years before Theresa Villiers led the Tory rebellion on the issue. She successfully branded the moderate Jenrick Reforms to replace our arbitrary planning mess with a predictable zoning system as a sinister plan to “create the slums of tomorrow”, and has continues to call on local people across the country to “speak out against housing plans.”
On allowing any new runways in our airports, it’s not just Heathrow Lucas opposed (a plan that would have reduced carbon emissions by lessening gas guzzling holding patterns, and even lessened noise pollution). Gatwick was out of the question too. And Bristol Airport. She even campaigns against carbon offsetting!
On new high speed rail links, which you might think would be a green (if slightly parochial) alternative to the international connections enabled by airports, Caroline has been one of the most vocal parliamentarians on preventing high speed rail being built, on the basis of the fact a line would cut down a few trees.
This is despite the ludicrous cost of the project in no small part being down to its Caroline Lucas Appeasement Measures - from the million trees that have been planted along the route, to the 2,000 bat boxes, 150 hibernacula banks, 160 barn owl boxes, 65 reptile banks, 29 artificial badger setts, the rehousing of thousands of newts, 14 hives for the British Black Bee, and a 20-hectare conservation area created as a habitat for the endangered Bechstein’s bat. She claims the project (which at this point is simply constructing a very expensive nature reserve between Old Oak Common and Birmingham) is “annihilating nature”.
(Perhaps the funniest thing about this is when the government lopped off the eastern leg of HS2, thanks to the concerted campaigning of Lucas as well as her fellow travellers in other parties, she complained that “pledges on rail are broken”. Bless.)
And on nuclear power Lucas has led the charge to turn off the charge. These days she campaigns against the powerful clean energy source that has enabled France to have half the level of greenhouse gas emissions compared to Germany1 on the basis that it would take a decade or so to build.
Which is peculiar, given that this was precisely the argument that she made… in 2008, writing “It simply isn't true that nuclear power is the answer to rising fuel prices, since the earliest that a new nuclear power station could come on stream is around 2017.” Oh how disastrously late that would have been.
Strangely, this article has disappeared from the Green Party website some time between when I last accessed it in 2022, and today. I can’t think why. Surely it isn’t anything to do with the fact that it was rather embarrassing to have this fact pointed out to her as bills were soaring last winter?
But it’s not just nuclear power. Lucas’ party has been at the forefront of local campaigns not just against clean green nuclear power but also solar and wind. The party has fervently opposed:
the Faversham Solar Farm, complaining it would “cover 890 acres of the Kent marshes”. They claimed, utterly erroneously, that “there is relatively little advantage to deploying solar energy in a single large development.”
Hastings Borough Council’s plans to build a 2MW solar farm.
plans for a solar farm in Reigate that could have powered 3,500 homes.
plans for a solar farm in Longfield, Essex with Green Councillor saying “the proposed Longfield Solar Farm in Essex is yet another scheme that is simply too large”.
any solar farms at all in Derbyshire, with Green Party Councillor Frank Adlington-Stringer explaining “the Green Party feel that solar farms should not be the future of Derbyshire's energy”.
even the infrastructure necessary for a wind farm in the north sea, has been fervently campaigned against by the party, which has argued “The residents of Friston have been particularly alarmed by wind power infrastructure due to be built in their area with current developer-led model.”
Caroline Lucas and the party she represents have campaigned with all their hearts against not just oil and gas from the north sea, or our wealth of cleaner shale gas, but also the zero carbon net zero necessary sources of nuclear power, solar power, and wind power.
And yet, we are all meant to profess our fawning and profound sympathy to such a titan of progress. Her noble pursuit of a world without too many houses, nuclear power, high speed trains, or economic growth is to be applauded. Here are a smattering of the vomit inducing tributes we have seen today:
Ian Dunt “Gutted by this. An outstanding MP and a reassuring voice for sanity. Will miss her contributions very much.”
Chris Bryant “I’m sorry to see this. I have enjoyed working with Caroline Lucas on many campaigns and she has been a beacon in a dark time.”
George Monbiot “There has been no better MP in my lifetime than Caroline Lucas. There must be at least eight clones of her – otherwise how could she do so much? She will be sorely missed in Parliament”
Gary Lineker “This is a great shame. Just as we need more Green MPs, we lose our first.”
Luke Tryl “Sad to see Caroline Lucas decide to stand down. Whatever you think of her politics she’s a deeply values led politician who has blazed a unique path in Parliament.”
Emma Kennedy “What a loss to parliament. Phenomenal and effective MP. Good luck with whatever you do next.”
Femi Olowole “For two years, Caroline Lucas was the only person I trusted in Parliament... Imma need a minute.”
Peter Kyle “Caroline’s election brought a unique voice to our politics and I’m grateful for her friendship and kindness. I’ve enjoyed working alongside her on many local and national issues too.”
Best For Britain “there is no doubting the tireless commitment, intellectual rigour, and crystal clarity that Caroline brought to any debate. The Commons will be poorer without her, but I have no doubt that she will continue to lead in other ways.”
Priyamvada Gopal “We always lose the good ones. You will be missed Caroline Lucas but all the very best in your next steps.”
Alexis Conran “A huge loss for the Commons. One of the most straight talking, clear and honest MPs to interview.”
It is striking to see how many of those who are always the first to attack Brexit on the grounds of lower future GDP growth projections from organisations with acronyms simultaneously have such doting words to say about the Queen of the Anti-Growth Movement. Did they not read her resignation statement to the point where she boasted of convincing the country it is a “myth” that “economic growth makes us happier”.
Because she doesn’t even pretend to hide it.
“I have said the previously unsayable, only to see it become part of the mainstream, on coal, on the myth that endless economic growth makes us happier, on a Green New Deal.”
Degrowth should be unsayable. Deliberately impoverishing the country should be nothing to boast about. It should be a point of shame, something no one congratulates or lauds.
What can be said about Lucas is that she can retire from the commons as one of the most consequential MPs of the last four Parliaments. Looking back at her campaigns it is remarkable to see how successful she was. Though she, for example, complained that Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn were ambiguous on economic growth in general and Heathrow expansion in particular - as things turned out both danced precisely to her tune.
As a result of the success of Lucas’ arguments, the UK’s premier hub airport is still hobbled with just two runways. Charles de Gaulle has four. Amsterdam’s Schiphol has six.
And as for growth, Britain has tried the degrowth experiment. As the always interesting Stian Westlake recently posited in the Works In Progress Newsletter, British governments national and perhaps more importantly local have followed Lucas’ ideas with gusto:
the “abandoning economic growth” bit has gone surprisingly well. If you’re in the UK, you’re probably familiar with the ONS’s statistics showing what has happened to productivity—the UK’s output per hour worked—since the late 2000s. They make grim reading for economists, with growth close to zero, and far below the pre-2008 trend.
“Perhaps we should acknowledge that the advocates of degrowth have won, at least for the time being, and the world we see around us is—perhaps inadvertently—a world of their making.”
On planning, energy, transport, and even the government’s inability to cut the top rate of tax back to where it was under Tony Blair’s government, the succession of coalition, small majority, minority, and covid-struck governments since Lucas came to power have acquiesced to the campaigns of her and her anti-growth fellow travellers to a greater degree than many have realised.
Of course, it’s not just Caroline Lucas who has got us to this point, but the fact that Parliament has either been hung or had a wafer thin majority for an entire decade (May 2010 - December 2019) made the campaigns and voices of figures like Caroline Lucas unusually influential.
It meant that despite successive government committing to a third runway at Heathrow, it never got built. It meant that despite successive governments committing to planning reform, they never achieved it. It meant that despite the obvious need for energy infrastructure, we became the build nothing country.
The correct plaudit for Lucas as an MP is that she was terrible, but great. A political Voldemort. A hyper effective campaigner for policies that actively impoverished particularly those who are worst off in Britain. Of course, those who already have accrued their wealth have less of a stake in economic growth. It’s those at the bottom of the pile who need it most.
Many of the ideas that Lucas has fought for have become policy. They have served to deliver the highest taxes in the peacetime history of this country, with crippled public services to boot. That is the bankrupt reality of post-growth thinking. It deserves nothing more than to be shown the door.
Such an important & well-written article. Really shocking stuff. Where's our Harry Potter to step in before she regenerates 😬